Hi All... i'm trying to make it interesting for myself to practice licks and solo improvisations using the A minor Blues scale that i'm currently learning (i've been playing a month) .

At the moment i'm playing a lick or improvisation and then switching to one of the following runs below (not sure if they fit with the A Blues scale?) before moving back to another lick and then going back and forth like that.

Can anyone recommend some interesting Blues chord progressions or short runs/riffs that i can use to interchange between whilst learning the scale? I hope that makes sense.

7ths and 9ths are great chords. Practice that: its the underlying basics of lots and lots of music

I have to go otherwise I would tab out some progressions that you could mess with and some chord shapes. If no one else does i'll do it later tonight. Peace!

Dimebag22

01-27-2008, 06:53 PM

I already posted this in another thread, and I'm just using it again :haha

Ok, first it would be a very, very good idea to learn the basic theory of the blues. Then, once you have that down, try looking at certain songs and you will find that many of these songs use the exact same theory as you just learned.

So it would be really great if you learn the basic spread rhythm that goes I, IV, V. So if you were in E, the I chord would be E obviously, the IV chord would be A, and the V chord would be B. So a basic spread rhythm in E would be:

Now there are many different ways to play a 12 bar progression and this is just one of the ways. This way is Root for 1 bar, IV for 1 bar, root for 2 bars, IV for 2 bars, Root for 2 bars, V for 1 bar, IV for 1 bar, root for 1 bar, and then V for 1 bar.

You can also use this: root for 4 bars, IV for 2 bars, root for 2 bars, IV for 2 bars, than back to the root for 2 more bars. That makes 12 bars.

To get some good bass walking patterns try SRV's Pride And Joy, once you get the hang of this.

Then you should learn the blues scale and the pentatonic scale, this can be found here (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/lessons/scales/major_and_minor_pentatonic_scales.html)
and here (http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/lessons/scales/blues_scales.html) Get this down! Know these scales by heart, it will help you out a lot when you jam with people or just improvising with a jam track.

Blurry 505

01-27-2008, 09:56 PM

yeah dimebag!

that should keep you set for a nice amount of time geetarmanic
yeah you'll think it gets boring right away.. but to practice and improv that 12 bar is the basis of oh i dunno.. 90% of all blues. Real blues anyway